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Journal of Art Historiography Number 11 December 2014 Friedrich Sarre and the discovery of Seljuk Anatolia Patricia Blessing The German art historian Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945) is well known for his role in the excavations of the Abbasid palaces of Samarra (Iraq) from 1911-13, which he directed together with Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948), and as the director of the Islamic collection in the Berlin Museums from 1921 until 1931. Less well studied is Sarre’s work on Seljuk art and architecture, which presents some of the earliest studies of the subject during a period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when Islamic art history was a nascent academic field. Sarre’s work on medieval Anatolia has been analysed neither in the context of early studies on Seljuk architecture, nor in the general account of the emergence of Islamic art history as a field of scholarship. In a recent article, Oya Pancaroğlu has focused on Sarre’s first book on Anatolia, Reise in Kleinasien (Journey in Anatolia). 1 This travel account is based on Sarre’s exploration of the area in 1895, which lead to his wider interest in Islamic architecture. Sarre’s later work, however, much of which also includes work on the Seljuk monuments of Konya and on Seljuk art more broadly, has not yet been investigated in the context of the early art historical literature on Seljuk Anatolia. Sarre’s work remains rooted in the earlier vein of scholarship on Islamic art, particularly valuing Persianate objects and buildings. Thus, this article argues that, unlike many scholars who worked on the arts of Anatolia in the 1920s and 1930, after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, Sarre didn’t focus on the region as the cradle of a nation, nor did he study Seljuk art as an expression of Turkish culture. Hence, his viewpoint provides a corrective to the narrative of Seljuk architecture as it emerges within the context of Turkish nation building in the 1920s and 1930s. To a large extent, Sarre’s work stood at the tail end of a long tradition of German scholarly work within the Ottoman Empire based on the good diplomatic relations between the two governments. The author thanks the following individuals for their help at various stages as this article was developed: Claus-Peter Haase, Jens Kröger, Lucia van der Linde, Gülru Necipoğlu, Filiz Çakır Phillip, Andraś Riedlmayer, Richard Woodfield, Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ayşin Yoltar- Yıldırım. 1 Oya Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle Reconnaissance of Seljuk Architecture in Anatolia: Friedrich Sarre and his Reise in Kleinasien’, in: Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem, eds, Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914, Istanbul: SALT, 2011, 399-416.

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Page 1: Friedrich Sarre and the discovery of Seljuk Anatolia...Patricia Blessing Friedrich Sarre and the discovery of Seljuk Anatolia 2 Historiographical studies of early scholarship on medieval

Journal of Art Historiography Number 11 December 2014

Friedrich Sarre and the discovery of Seljuk

Anatolia

Patricia Blessing

The German art historian Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945) is well known for his role in

the excavations of the Abbasid palaces of Samarra (Iraq) from 1911-13, which he

directed together with Ernst Herzfeld (1879-1948), and as the director of the Islamic

collection in the Berlin Museums from 1921 until 1931. Less well studied is Sarre’s

work on Seljuk art and architecture, which presents some of the earliest studies of

the subject during a period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when

Islamic art history was a nascent academic field. Sarre’s work on medieval Anatolia

has been analysed neither in the context of early studies on Seljuk architecture, nor

in the general account of the emergence of Islamic art history as a field of

scholarship. In a recent article, Oya Pancaroğlu has focused on Sarre’s first book on

Anatolia, Reise in Kleinasien (Journey in Anatolia). 1 This travel account is based on

Sarre’s exploration of the area in 1895, which lead to his wider interest in Islamic

architecture. Sarre’s later work, however, much of which also includes work on the

Seljuk monuments of Konya and on Seljuk art more broadly, has not yet been

investigated in the context of the early art historical literature on Seljuk Anatolia.

Sarre’s work remains rooted in the earlier vein of scholarship on Islamic art,

particularly valuing Persianate objects and buildings.

Thus, this article argues that, unlike many scholars who worked on the arts

of Anatolia in the 1920s and 1930, after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey,

Sarre didn’t focus on the region as the cradle of a nation, nor did he study Seljuk art

as an expression of Turkish culture. Hence, his viewpoint provides a corrective to

the narrative of Seljuk architecture as it emerges within the context of Turkish

nation building in the 1920s and 1930s. To a large extent, Sarre’s work stood at the

tail end of a long tradition of German scholarly work within the Ottoman Empire

based on the good diplomatic relations between the two governments.

The author thanks the following individuals for their help at various stages as this article

was developed: Claus-Peter Haase, Jens Kröger, Lucia van der Linde, Gülru Necipoğlu, Filiz

Çakır Phillip, Andraś Riedlmayer, Richard Woodfield, Wendy M.K. Shaw, Ayşin Yoltar-

Yıldırım.

1 Oya Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle Reconnaissance of Seljuk Architecture in Anatolia:

Friedrich Sarre and his Reise in Kleinasien’, in: Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik, Edhem Eldem,

eds, Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914, Istanbul:

SALT, 2011, 399-416.

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2

Historiographical studies of early scholarship on medieval Anatolia have emerged

in recent years, some focusing on the period before the 1914-18 war and the end of

the Ottoman Empire, while others discuss the changes to art historical discourse

after the Republic of Turkey was established in 1923.2

Sarre’s publications share the fate of being understudied with other early

studies on Islamic architecture in Anatolia, such as those of Max van Berchem (1864-

1921), the Swiss epigrapher who is better known for his work on Arabic inscriptions

elsewhere in the Islamic world, and of the French Jesuit Guillaume de Jerphanion

(1877-1948) who documented Byzantine and Islamic monuments in Anatolia in the

first decade of the twentieth century.3 However, these early twentieth-century

scholars’ studies are invaluable for their photographic documentation and

descriptions of the state of buildings that have often greatly deteriorated over the

course of the twentieth century. In a survey of studies on Turkish architecture

published up to 1971, Howard Crane pointed out the shortcomings of these early

publications in that they lack socio-cultural context in their analyses, while

acknowledging their systematic nature.4 While such context is indeed in part

lacking, the contribution of these early scholars in recording Seljuk art and

architecture, and presenting it as a subject of study to art historians and

archaeologists outside the Ottoman Empire (and later Turkey) is nevertheless

considerable.

Sarre’s publications span across the end of the Ottoman Empire and the

foundation of the Republic of Turkey, even though, as will be shown below, they

are better placed in the context of Ottoman-German relations before the 1914-18

war. A closer look at Sarre’s work is also justified by his early interventions in the

study of Islamic art in Germany and the importance of his collection for the Berlin

Museums. Sarre’s work on the Seljuk monuments of Konya is to be considered

2 Oya Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism and the Academic Foundation of Turkish Art in the early

Twentieth Century’, Muqarnas, 24, 2007, 67-78; Scott Redford, ‘ “What have you done for

Anatolia today?”: Islamic Archaeology in the early years of the Turkish Republic’, Muqarnas,

24, 2007, 243-252; Korkut Eder, ed, Albert Gabriel (1883-1972): mimar, arkeolog, ressam, gezgin,

Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2006. 3 Max van Berchem and Halil Edhem, Matériaux pour un Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum:

Troisième Partie: Asie Mineure, Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1917;

Guillaume de Jerphanion, Mélanges d'archéologie anatolienne: monuments préhelléniques, gréco-

romains, byzantins et musulmans de Pont, de Cappadoce et de Galatie, Beirut: Université de Saint-

Joseph, 1928. Several historiographical studies of Jerphanion exist: Philippe Luisier, ed, La

Turquie de Guillaume de Jerphanion, S.J.: actes du colloque de Rome (9-10 mai 1997), Mélanges de

l'Ecole Française de Rome, Moyen Age, 110, 1998, 773-970; Vincenzo Ruggieri, Guillaume de

Jerphanion et la Turquie de jadis, Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1997; Vincenzo Ruggieri,

‘Guillaume de Jerphanion (1877-1948) as Jesuit and Scholar in Turkey’, in Scott Redford and

Nina Ergin, eds, Perceptions of the Past in the Turkish Republic: Classical and Byzantine Periods,

Leuven and Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010, 101-126. 4 Howard Crane, ‘Recent Literature on the History of Turkish Architecture’, Journal of the

Society of Architectural Historians, 31:4, December 1972, 309.

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within the context of its time, when the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire

were in close contact over the construction of the Baghdad railway, and negotiations

over cultural artefacts often ended favourably for German museums. The study of

Sarre’s life must rely on fragmentary biographies and obituaries because the

scholar’s entire library and large parts of his personal papers were destroyed when

the family mansion was cleared out in preparation for the Potsdam conference at the

end of the 1939-45 war.5 Sarre, who had died only a few days before, did not live to

see the loss of his life’s work.6

From Konya to Berlin: The Baghdad railway and Islamic architecture

The rising interest in Islamic art at German universities and museums in the late

nineteenth century is part of the wider trend for the development of collections and

scholarship with a focus on Islamic art in the same period. Moreover, the German

development is connected to the close diplomatic ties between the German

Kaiserreich and the Ottoman Empire. Even if the German advances to the Ottoman

Empire did not have direct colonial aims, they were intended to increase political

and economic influence in the Middle East, and provide access to resources for

German companies. These political and economic policies heightened interest in

Anatolia, particularly once the construction of the Baghdad railway during the reign

of the German emperor Wilhelm II (r. 1888-1918) and the Ottoman sultan

Abdülhamid II (r. 1876-1909) facilitated access to the region from Istanbul, along

with other projects intended to develop German presence in the region.7

In studies of the historiography of art, the discussion of these contacts has

focused the transfer of historical objects from various regions of the Ottoman

Empire to Germany.8 The antiquities laws established in the Ottoman Empire under

the guidance of director of antiquities (and painter) Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910)

play an important role in these transactions because over time, they applied to an

5 Jens Kröger, ‘Die Sammlung des Orientalisten, Archäologen und Kunsthistorikers Friedrich

Sarre (1865-1945)’, in Privates und öffentliches Sammeln in Potsdam – 100 Jahre »Kunst ohne

König«, Berlin: Lukas-Verlag, 2009, 120-121. Some letters are preserved in the archives of the

Staatliche Museen, Berlin: Jens Kröger, ‘The 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke

Muhammedanischer Kunst”: Its Protagonists and its Consequences for the Display of

Islamic Art in Berlin’, in: Andrea Lerner and Avinoam Shalem, eds, After One Hundred Years:

The 1910 Exhibition ‘Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst’ Reconsidered, Leiden: Brill, 2010,

67, n. 5. 6 Ernst Herzfeld, ‘Friedrich Sarre’, Ars Islamica 11, 1946, 210-212; Ernst Kühnel, ‘Friedrich

Sarre’, Der Islam, 29, 1950, 291-295. 7 Malte Fuhrmann, Der Traum vom deutschen Orient: Zwei deutsche Kolonien im Osmanischen

Reich, 1851-1918, Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2006; Sean McMeekin, The Berlin-Baghdad

Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap

Press for Harvard University Press, 2010. 8 Wendy M.K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of

History in the late Ottoman Empire, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 131-136.

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increasing number of object categories. The friendly relations between the two

empires enabled German scholars to work and travel within the Ottoman territories,

and to receive excavation permits. Carl Humann’s (1839-1896) work in Pergamon

(today Bergama, Turkey)9 and Herzfeld’s and Sarre’s project in Samarra (Iraq), are

only two of many examples of archaeological investigation enabled by these

diplomatic contacts.10

The context of the development of Islamic art as an independent field of

study, and the political milieu of the period, form the backdrop for the scholarly

endeavours of Sarre and his contemporaries before the 1914-18 war.11 A diplomatic

appointment directly led to an interest in medieval Anatolia in the case of Julius

Löytved (1874-1917), German consul in Konya from 1904 to 1907, who published a

book on the medieval Islamic inscriptions of this city.12 Löytved’s study contains

photographs of the monuments and readings of the inscriptions with renderings in

Arabic script and in German translation.13 Access to central Anatolia was still

difficult at that time, explaining in part why Islamic architecture in this region was

much less studied during the nineteenth century than monuments in major urban

centres such as Cairo or Damascus.

Access to central Anatolia improved gradually with the construction of the

Baghdad railway. While travelling in Anatolia for the first time in 1895, Friedrich

Sarre observed the construction of the railway line near Afyon Karahısar and

pointed out the dominant role of German engineering and materials employed in

the construction.14 By 1904, the railway line reached Karaman, a city southwest of

9 Suzanne L. Marchand, Down from Olympos: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-

1970, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, 92-103; Suzanne L. Marchand, German

Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship, Washington, DC: German

Historical Institute and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009, 143; Fuhrmann, Der

Traum vom deutschen Orient, chapter 2. 10 Thomas Leisten, Excavation of Samarra, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2003, 5-6; Wolfgang

Radt, ‘Carl Humann und Osman Hamdi Bey – zwei Gründerväter der Archäologie in der

Türkei’, Istanbuler Mitteilungen, 53, 2003, 491-507. 11 Klaus Brisch, ‘Wilhelm von Bode und sein Verhältnis zur islamischen und ostasiatischen

Kunst’, Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Beiheft: ‘Kennerschaft’ - Kolloquium zum 150sten Geburtstag

von Wilhelm von Bode, 38, 1996, 33-48 and n. 14; Volkmar Enderlein, ‘Sarre, Friedrich’, in Eric

M. Meyers, ed, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1997, vol. 4, 491; Herzfeld, ‘Friedrich Sarre’; Kühnel, ‘Friedrich Sarre’. 12 Maria Keipert and Peter Grupp, Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes,

1871-1945, Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2000, vol. 3, 117-118; Ayşin Yoltar-Yıldırım, ‘Seljuk

Carpets and Julius Harry Löytved-Hardegg: A German Consul in Konya in the early 20th

century’, in Géza Dávid and Ibolya Gerelyes, eds, Thirteenth International Congress of Turkish

Art: Proceedings, Budapest: Hungarian National Museum, 2009, 747-757. 13 Julius Hardegg Löytved, Konia - Inschriften der seldschukischen Bauten, Berlin: Julius

Springer, 1907. 14 Friedrich Sarre, Reise in Kleinasien, Sommer 1895: Forschungen zur seldjukischen Kunst und

Geographie des Landes, Berlin: D. Reimer, 1896, 17-18.

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Konya. It facilitated access for art dealers or their associates among other travellers,

resulting in a marked increased in objects from Anatolia that reached the art market.

One of the most well-known examples of the effects of these increased contacts in

art trade is case of the miḥrāb of the late thirteenth-century Bey Hekim Mosque in

Konya.15 Composed of tile mosaic, the miḥrāb appeared on the art market,

dismantled into several pieces, in 1908 and 1909. Most of the fragments were bought

by the Islamic collection of the Berlin Museums, where the miḥrāb had to be

reassembled from the pieces and was not shown on display until 1965.16 Löytved

was involved in the acquisition of several carpets and wooden doors from Konya by

the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum in Berlin at the behest of its director Wilhelm von

Bode (1845-1929).17 Within this same context, Sarre began his travels in the Ottoman

Empire.

Friedrich Sarre as collector and curator

In the 1890s, Sarre was one of the first western art historians to undertake travels in

Anatolia. At the outset, he was by no means an expert in Islamic history, culture or

the relevant languages. Rather, Sarre had earned his doctorate in art history from

the university in Leipzig in 1890 with a dissertation on the architecture of the

sixteenth-century ducal court of Wismar in Germany. 18 Before venturing into

Anatolia, Sarre had travelled widely in the Islamic world, an activity permitted by

the personal fortune that his aunt had left him.19 Sarre’s experience with museum

work explains his dedication to detailed, contextualizing study of monuments and

objects in the publications that resulted from these travels. When Sarre went on his

first of many journeys to the Middle East, he had completed his studies in art

history, and worked in several Berlin museums for three years.20

Sarre’s publication on Seljuk architecture in Anatolia opened up a new field

within the study of Islamic art, and connected this previously barely studied period

to the broader narrative of the field as it emerged in the late nineteenth and early

15 On the building: Michael Meinecke, Fayencedekorationen seldschukischer Sakralbauten in

Kleinasien, Tübingen: Verlag Ernst Wasmuth, 1979, vol. 2, 326-336. 16 Volkmar Enderlein, ‘Der Miḥrāb der Bey Hakim Moschee in Konya: Ein Denkmal und

seine Geschichte’, Forschungen und Berichte: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer

Kulturbesitz, 17, 1976, 33-40 and plates 1-3; Jens Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln islamischer Kunst

zum Museum für Islamische Kunst’, in Jens Kröger with Désirée Heiden, eds, Islamische

Kunst in Berliner Sammlungen – 100 Jahre Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, Berlin: Parthas

Verlag, 2004, caption to fig. 32. 17 Yoltar-Yıldırım, ‘Seljuk Carpets and Julius Harry Löytved-Hardegg’, 751-752. 18 Friedrich Sarre, Der Fürstenhof zu Wismar und die norddeutsche Terrakotta-Architektur im

Zeitalter der Renaissance, Berlin: Trowitzsch & Sohn, 1890; Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 33. 19 Jens Kröger, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre’, in Ann C. Gunter and Stefan R. Hauser,

eds, Ernst Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900-1950, Leiden and Boston:

Brill, 2005, 49; Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle Reconnaissance’, 399. 20 Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 36.

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twentieth centuries.21 This intervention is crucial in that Sarre was among the early

supporters of the study of Islamic art in Germany, and began to establish his private

collection at the same time. The Islamic department of the Berlin Museums that

Sarre and von Bode founded in 1904 would later benefit from this activity.22 Sarre’s

studies on Seljuk architecture in Anatolia, just as his better-known work at the

Abbasid palace city of Samarra in Iraq, are thus central within the development of

scholarship on, and collections of, Islamic art in Germany within the broader context

of German-Ottoman relations.

The collection of the Berlin Museums also acquired objects directly through

the diplomatic contacts between Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Thus, in 1903,

the façade of the eighth-century Umayyad palace of Mshatta’ (today in Jordan),

which the Ottoman sultan, Abdülhamid II, had offered to the German Kaiser

Wilhelm II, finally arrived in Berlin. Osman Hamdi Bey’s resistance to exporting the

important monument against the stipulations of Ottoman antiquities laws had

failed. Overruled by the Ottoman sultan’s intervention, Osman Hamdi Bey had to

relent and grant permission to export the Mshatta’ façade under exceptional

conditions.23 In fact, as Volkmar Enderlein has shown, only the personal connection

between Wilhelm II and Abdülhamid II allowed for the exceptional decision to

permit the exportation of the façade.24 The façade arrived in Berlin during the last

stages of construction of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum and was not part of the

initial plan for the building; hence, it had to be installed at the last minute, delaying

the opening of the museum.25 As soon as the Mshatta’ facade was placed on view in

1904, a heated controversy over its origin began, which involved prominent art

historians and archaeologists, including Herzfeld and Josef Strzygowski.26

A few years after the transfer of the Mshatta’ façade, Ottoman antiquities

law was revised to place the same restrictions on the exportation of Islamic objects

which had been in place for classical antiquities since 1884.27 The text of the law,

21 Friedrich Sarre, Denkmäler persischer Baukunst: geschichtliche Untersuchung und Aufnahme

muhammedanischer Backsteinbauten in Vorderasien und Persien, Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1901-10,

chapter IV; Friedrich Sarre, Konia: Seldschukische Baudenkmäler: Denkmäler persischer Baukunst

Teil I, Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1921; Friedrich Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, Berlin: Verlag für

Kunstwissenschaft, 1936. 22 Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 32-33; Brisch, ‘Wilhelm von Bode’. 23 Marchand, Down from Olympus, 203-206; Marchand, German Orientalism, 398, 404; Kröger,

‘Vom Sammeln’, 39. 24 Volkmar Enderlein, ‘Die Erwerbung der Fassade von Mschatta’, Forschungen und Berichte:

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, 26, 1987, 87-88. 25 Brisch, ‘Wilhelm von Bode’, 38; Enderlein, ‘Erwerbung der Fassade’, 89. 26 Thomas Leisten, ‘Mshatta, Samarra and al-Hira: Ernst Herzfeld’s Theories concerning the

Development of the Hira-Style Revisited’, in Ann C. Gunter and Stefan R. Hauser, eds, Ernst

Herzfeld and the Development of Near Eastern Studies, 1900-1950, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005,

371-376. 27 Wendy Shaw, ‘Islamic Arts in the Ottoman Imperial Museum, 1889-1923’, Ars Orientalis,

30, 2000, 63.

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issued in 1906, gives a detailed explanation as to what types of objects were banned

from exportation to prevent loopholes. Nevertheless, the law remained largely

ineffective due to frequent complaints through diplomatic channels, and large finds

such as the market gate of Miletus, today in the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin, were

exported as late as 1908.28

An avid collector of Islamic art, Sarre contributed to the creation of the

Islamic collection together with Bode. The latter donated his collection of carpets to

the museum to be integrated into the newly founded Islamic department that had

yet to acquire a representative selection of objects from different regions of the

Islamic world.29 Sarre and von Bode also helped the Kunstgewerbemuseum

(Museum of Applied Arts) acquire objects of Islamic art, in part due to connections

that Sarre had maintained since an internship in 1894.30

Sarre was also involved in organizing the Munich exhibition of Islamic art in

1910, one of the first museum presentations entirely devoted to the arts of the

Islamic world.31 The strong emphasis on Persian art in the exhibition reflected how

Islamic art was classified along ethnic categories, valuing ‘Persian’ and ‘Indo-

Persian’ more than ‘Turkish’ or ‘Arab’ art.32 This framework may have had an

impact on Sarre’s later argument—particularly strong in his earliest publications on

Anatolia—that Seljuk art in the region was fundamentally Persian, as will be

discussed below. In 1910, it could not be foreseen that the events of the 1914-18 war

would bring about the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of a Turkish nation

state, events that would profoundly change the study of Seljuk art. Sarre organized

the Munich exhibition together with the Swedish collector and scholar Fredrik

Robert Martin (1868-1933) and Ernst Kühnel (1882-1964) who was to succeed Sarre

as the director of the Islamic collection of the Berlin Museums in 1931.33 Even

28 Shaw, Possessors and Possessed, 126-130. 29 Herzfeld, ‘Friedrich Sarre’, 211-212; Gisela Helmecke, ‘Historisches zu Sammlern und

Vermittlern islamischer Kunst in Berlin’, in Jens Kröger with Désirée Heiden, eds, Islamische

Kunst in Berliner Sammlungen – 100 Jahre Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin, Berlin: Parthas

Verlag, 2004, 18. 30 Gisela Helmecke, ‘Das Kunstgewerbemuseum und der Orient’, in Jens Kröger with

Désirée Heiden, eds, Islamische Kunst in Berliner Sammlungen – 100 Jahre Museum für

Islamische Kunst in Berlin, Berlin: Parthas Verlag, 2004, 209. 31 Historiographical assessment in: Andrea Lerner and Avinoam Shalem, eds, After One

Hundred Years: The 1910 Exhibition ‘Meisterwerke muhammedanischer Kunst’ Reconsidered,

Leiden: Brill, 2010; Marchand, German Orientalism, 140-145. 32 Gülru Necipoğlu, ‘The Concept of Islamic Art: Inherited Discourses and New

Approaches’, first published in Islamic Art and the Museum, Benoît Junod et al., eds, London:

Saqi Books, 2012, reprinted in Journal of Art Historiography 6, 2012, 4-6,

http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/necipogludoc.pdf, accessed 1 March

2013. 33 Kröger, ‘The 1910 Exhibition’, 65-72; Friedrich Sarre and F.R. Martin, Die Ausstellung von

Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst in München, 1910, 3 vols, Munich: F. Bruckmann,

1912, reprint, London: Alexandria Press, 1985.

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though the exhibition was not as successful with the public as they had hoped, the

three scholars persisted in their commitment to the study of Islamic art. Sarre’s,

Martin’s and Kühnel’s commitment to the field was to persist beyond the 1914-18

war that profoundly changed the opportunities for German scholars to conduct

fieldwork in the Middle East (particularly once the Ottoman Empire no longer

existed).

Sarre collected a wide range of objects from the Islamic world, contributing

to the material record for a growing field. In the first volume of a planned catalogue

of his collection, Sarre pointed out that many of the 203 objects had been acquired

during extensive travels in Anatolia, Central Asia, and Iran.34 Objects came from

Cairo, Tehran, and Istanbul, and even from a church in Lake Ereğli near Akşehir in

Turkey, while others were purchased on the European art market.35 Since Sarre later

turned away from the idea of publishing a full catalogue of his collection, a better

impression of its contents can be gained from the exhibition of 425 selected objects at

the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main in 1932. The collection included

ancient Iranian, Egyptian, Byzantine and Sasanian in addition to Islamic objects

(and paintings of the Italian Renaissance).36 Large parts of the collection were on

loan to the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum since 1904. In 1922, one year after he became

the director of the Islamic department, Sarre gave 683 Islamic, Sasanian and

Parthian objects to the museum.37 It has been suggested that Sarre took the post of

director when he was obliged to ask for a salary, having lost his fortune due to the

monetary inflation after the 1914-18 war, and donated his collection to the museum

in return.38 For Sarre’s sixtieth birthday in 1925, colleagues and collectors made a

large donation that further contributed to the expansion of the Islamic collection at

the Berlin Museums.39 Parts of the collection were destroyed when Sarre’s house

was cleared out a few days after his death, and his widow sold many other objects

after the 1939-45 war.40 Sarre died on 31 May41 or 1 June42 1945 after a long career in

34 Friedrich Sarre, Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst. Band I – Metall, Berlin: Kommissionsverlag

von K. W. Hiersemann in Leipzig, 1906, vi. 35 Sarre, Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst. Band I, cat. 146-151; Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle

Reconnaissance’, 405-407. 36 Sammlung F. u. M. Sarre – Katalog der Ausstellung im Städelschen Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt a.

M.: Städelsches Kunstinstitut, 1932. 37 Jens Kröger, ‘Museum of Islamic Art, State Museums of Berlin – Prussian Heritage’, in

Joachim Gierlichs and Annette Hagedorn, eds, Islamic Art in Germany, Mainz am Rhein:

Philipp von Zabern, 2004, 50. 38 Brisch, ‘Wilhelm von Bode’, 43; Kröger, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre’, 59;

Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle Reconnaissance’, 401. 39 Helmecke, ‘Historisches’, 19-21; Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 41. 40 Kröger, ‘Die Sammlung’, 120-121; Joachim Gierlichs ‘Friedrich Sarre (1865-1945): The

reconstruction of his collection of Islamic art’, paper presented at the Historians of Islamic

Art Association’s Second Biennial Symposium in Washington, DC, 21 to 23 October 2010. 41 Kühnel, ‘Friedrich Sarre’, 191. 42 Herzfeld, Friedrich Sarre’, 210.

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museum and fieldwork that is recorded in publications ranging from a study of the

ceramics of Samarra to his travel accounts of Iran and Anatolia.

Friedrich Sarre in Anatolia and Mesopotamia (1895-1918)

Sarre’s first journey through Anatolia in 1895 led to the publication of Reise in

Kleinasien in 1896. In this work, Pancaroğlu suggests, Sarre intended to understand

defining characteristics that would help shaping Seljuk art as a distinct category

within the field of Islamic art, then only in its initial stages as an academic

discipline.43 The book presents an account of the geography of the region and of the

Seljuk monuments that Sarre recorded while travelling from Istanbul to Konya and

Akşehir. In addition to the descriptions of Seljuk caravanserais and mosques

encountered on the way that are strewn throughout the text, two chapters of the

book are entirely devoted to Seljuk art and architecture. In chapter four, Sarre

describes selected monuments in Konya, including the kiosk that was to become the

subject of an independent publication in 1936, towards the end of Sarre’s career.44

In the fifth chapter of the book, titled ‘Seldjukische Kunst’ (Seljuk Art), Sarre

ventured into an analysis of this, at that point, little known period of Islamic art

based on the monuments that were described in the previous chapter, relying on a

thorough discussion of the building techniques employed in their construction.

Sarre proposes that Seljuk art and architecture are essentially a combination of the

Hellenistic and Byzantine heritage of Anatolia with Persian art imported by the

Seljuk conquerors from Iran in the eleventh century.45 Here, Sarre created a stylistic

unity for the study of Seljuk art and architecture, with characteristics that he firmly

attributed to either Byzantine or Persian influence. Ornament, in particular,

according to Sarre, stood in line with the heritage of the late antique Mediterranean,

as postulated by the Austrian art historian, Alois Riegl (1858-1905).46

Sarre’s archaeological interest is clear in the drawings, photographs and

careful descriptions of monuments. In a detailed description of the Karatay Medrese

(dated 1251-52) in Konya, for instance, Sarre points out the intricacies of the vegetal

carving on the portal columns, the careful execution of the varied borders

delineating fields of ornament, and especially the extent to which some of the

carving attains a ‘filigree’ effect on parts of the façade.47 The plates are carefully

photographed and enable the reader to appreciate a great deal of the detail

described in the text.

43 Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle Reconnaissance’, 399. 44 Sarre, Reise in Kleinasien, 43-46. 45 Sarre, Reise in Kleinasien, 68-70. 46 Pancaroğlu, ‘A Fin-de-Siècle Reconnaissance’, 404. 47 ‘Originell sind drei durchbrochene, wie aus Filigran gearbeitete Knöpfe, welche

halbkugelförmig aus dem oberen Theile hervorragen’. Sarre, Reise in Kleinasien, 49.

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Initially, Sarre travelled to Anatolia in order to identify an Islamic site for

archaeological excavation.48 This explains much of Sarre’s documentary work to

record architectural remains. Since the first journey to Anatolia did not result in an

excavation project for Sarre, further travels soon followed. In 1897-98 and 1899-1900,

Sarre travelled to Iran and Central Asia. The research conducted during these

journeys, on topics ranging from Sasanian rock reliefs to Safavid architecture, was

included in several of Sarre’s later publications. In 1899, Sarre exhibited parts of the

material collected during his travels, including photographs, drawings made by the

architect Bruno Schulz in Iran, and objects from his collection of Islamic art, in the

Martin-Gropius Bau in Berlin, at that time the location of the Museum of Applied

Arts.49 The Islamic material that Sarre collected in these years was the basis for the

multi-volume set Denkmäler persischer Baukunst (Monuments of Persian Architecture).

Initially published in seven consignments of fascicules between 1901 and 1910, the

work contained numerous plates and detailed texts (the latter were issued last). In

one volume of text and two volumes of large-format plates, Persian Islamic

architecture in the broadest sense (and in the understanding of the early twentieth

century) is presented.

Within the three volumes, the Seljuk monuments of Konya are discussed

together with several sites located in Iran. The latter include the Safavid ancestral

shrine in Ardabīl (begun in the fourteenth century), the mausoleum of Bayezid al-

Bisṭāmī in Bisṭām (twelfth to fourteenth centuries), and the Islamic monuments of

Isfahan, dating from the eleventh to the seventeenth century.50 Throughout his

career, Sarre placed the Seljuk monuments of Konya (he never wrote on other

Anatolian cities) within the framework of Persian art that he established here. The

issue of Turkish national and ethic identity, so important in the 1920s and 1930s, had

not yet emerged in the context of art history at the time Sarre prepared the first

edition of Denkmäler persischer Baukunst in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Here, as in the Munich exhibition of Islamic art in 1910, the focus on Persian

art and culture remains central and integrates Seljuk art into a framework that,

according to the narrative of the time, put it at the top of the hierarchy of Islamic art

in the eyes of Western scholars and collectors. Sarre’s extensive activity as a collector

of Islamic art, museum work, and acquaintance with scholars in the field suggest

that he was at the very least aware of the development of this narrative.51 As noted

48 Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 36. 49 Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 37 and figs. 17-9. 50 Kröger, ‘Vom Sammeln’, 36. Two sections of the publication were later reprinted as

individual volumes: Sarre, Konia: Seldschukische Baudenkmäler in 1921 and Friedrich Sarre,

Ardabil: Grabmoschee des Schech Safi: Denkmäler persischer Baukunst Teil II, Berlin: E. Wasmuth,

1924. 51 For the sake of space, the creation of this narrative cannot be fully explored here, yet the

central role of Arthur Upham Pope in introducing Persian art to a western audience and

promoting this narrative must be mentioned. For an overview, see: Yuka Kadoi, ‘Arthur

Upham Pope and his “research methods in Muhammadan art”: Persian carpets’, Journal of

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before, early scholars of Islamic art and architecture proceeded closely along the

lines of ethnic and national categories that shaped the field as it emerged in the late

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The long-lasting impact Orientalist

scholarship on the study of Islamic art has been demonstrated at various levels,

most importantly (in the present context) with regard to racial considerations that

converged with ethnic and national categories.52 Within the hierarchy of Islamic

cultures created for the purpose of classification, Persian art was the most highly

valued, and even Ottoman art, coveted by collectors and museums, was re-labelled

as ‘Persian’ or ‘Turco-Persian’ to elevate it to the more prestigious category.53 These

categories were already in the process of consolidation while Sarre conducted his

research, and his inclusion of Seljuk architecture within the framework of a study of

Persian monuments reflects similar tendencies.

In the years after Sarre’s trip to Iran, further travels were to follow.

Eventually, Sarre got his excavation, although not in Anatolia as he had initially

intended. In 1907-08, Sarre and Herzfeld travelled to Mesopotamia (northern Syria

and Iraq) to find an Islamic site suitable for excavation. Starting out from Istanbul,

they travelled to Ereğli via Konya and Karaman by train, exploiting this new means

of transportation to facilitate their journey considerably compared to Sarre’s first

venture into Anatolia in 1895. From Karaman, the two travellers continued to

Mesopotamia, where they visited many sites including Bālis, Raqqa, and Mosul.

Finally, the choice fell on Samarra near Baghdad, a site that became famous for the

Abbasid palace city that Herzfeld partially excavated between 1911 and 1913. The

permit for the excavation, given by the Ottoman authorities, was one of the results

(just as the acquisition of the Mshatta’ façade) of the friendly ties between the

German and Ottoman Empires.54

Soon, world historical events interrupted the excavation and further

research. During the 1914-18 war, Sarre was one of many German experts of the

Middle East who were posted to the region. He arrived in Istanbul in February 1915

and spent most of the war in the border region between Iran and Iraq in order to

survey German intelligence. Later, Sarre described this appointment with the

words:

Nearly for the entire duration of the war, from February 1915 until spring

1918, I was posted for military purposes in Mesopotamia and Persia, in

Art Historiography 6, June, 2012,

http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/kadoi.pdf, accessed 4 June 2012. 52 Necipoğlu, ‘The Concept of Islamic Art’, 4. 53 Stephen Vernoit, ‘Islamic Art and Architecture: An Overview of Scholarship and

Collecting, c. 1850 – c. 1950’, in Stephen Vernoit, ed, Discovering Islamic Art: Scholars,

Collectors and Collections, 1850–1950, London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2000, 6–7 and 19;

Necipoğlu, ‘The Concept of Islamic Art’, 6. 54 Herzfeld, ‘Friedrich Sarre’, 210-211; Kröger, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre’, 52-55;

Kröger, ‘Erforschung der Dschazira’; Leisten, Excavation of Samarra, 9.

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various positions such as liaison officer for the expeditions advancing

eastwards on the Turkish-Persian border, as commander in the rear echelon

and consul in Kermanshah in Persia, as major in the staff of field marshal

Baron von der Goltz in Baghdad, as military attaché for Kermanshah and

finally in the staff of the army group of General Falkenhayn in Aleppo. This

diverse military activity, travel for official business, and two home leaves

gave me the opportunity to repeatedly visit archaeological sites and older

and newer monuments in this area which I knew already, and to observe

possible changes that the war caused in them. 55

Thanks to these military appointments, Sarre had the opportunity to visit Samarra

in 1916 and control the storage of finds that Herzfeld had left behind in 1913.56 After

the war, however, Sarre was added to a blacklist that prevented him from travelling

to Iran for ten years. The ban was lifted in 1921, enabling Sarre to engage in new

projects in the region, often in collaboration with Herzfeld.57 While for several years,

Sarre did not expand on his work on Seljuk art and architecture he was to return to

it later in his career, with new publications based on his earlier research. Perhaps

because he did not form connections with Turkish academia after the foundation of

the Republic of Turkey, Sarre’s work was not affected by the ideological struggles in

that country during the 1920s and 1930s. At this time, the shaping of a new national

identity focused on the central place of Anatolia in the national territory. Thus,

Anatolian unity and culture became essential elements in defining the new Turkish

nation state. Sarre’s work, with its focus on Persianate culture as a basis for Seljuk

art reaching beyond Anatolia, moved to the fringes of the historiography. While

55 ‘Fast während der gesamten Kriegsdauer, vom Februar 1915 bis zum Frühjahr 1918, wurde

ich militärisch in Mesopotamien und Persien verwendet, und zwar in verschiedenen

Stellungen, als Verbindungsoffizier für die ostwärts vorgeschobenen Expeditionen an der

türkisch-persischen Grenze, als Etappenkommandant und Konsul in Kermanshah in Persien,

als Major im Stabe des Feldmarschalls Frhrn. von der Goltz in Bagdad, als Militär-Attaché

für Persien in Kermanshah und endlich im Stabe der Heeresgruppe des Generals von

Falkenhayn in Aleppo. Diese mannigfaltige militärische Tätigkeit, dienstliche Reisen und ein

zweimaliger Urlaub in die Heimat gaben mir Gelegenheit, in diesen mir schon bekannten

Gebieten Ausgrabungsstätten und Denkmäler älterer und jüngerer Zeit wiederholt zu

besuchen und durch den Krieg bei ihnen evtl. hervorgerufene Veränderung zu beobachten’.

Friedrich Sarre, ‘Kunstwissenschaftliche Arbeit während des Weltkrieges in Mesopotamien,

Ost-Anatolien, Persien und Afghanistan’, in Paul Clemen, ed, Kunstschutz im Kriege – Berichte

über den Zustand der Kunstdenkmäler auf den verschiedenen Kriegsschauplätzen und über die

deutschen und österreichischen Maßnahmen zur ihrer Erhaltung, Rettung, Erforschung, Leipzig:

E.A. Seemann, 1919, vol. 2, 191. 56 Leisten, Excavation of Samarra, 27 and n. 151; Ulrich Gehrke, Persien in der deutschen

Orientpolitik während der ersten Weltkrieges – Anmerkungen und Dokumente, Stuttgart: W.

Kohlhammer, n.d., vol. 2, n. 411; Kröger, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre’, 57; Sarre,

‘Kunstwissenschaftliche Arbeit’, 193-194. 57 Kröger, ‘Ernst Herzfeld and Friedrich Sarre’, 60-61; Marchand, German Orientalism, 449.

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Sarre’s work had little bearing on the narrative that was established in the early

years of the Republic of Turkey, another German speaking scholar, Josef

Strzygowski, had a significant impact with some of his work that was translated

into Turkish.58

The kiosk of Konya

The last publication that Sarre wrote on Seljuk architecture was at the same time the

only one to be translated into Turkish, although not until the 1960s.59 In 1936, Sarre

published a short monograph on a Seljuk kiosk in Konya, based on research

conducted decades earlier, and a last visit to the badly damaged monument in

1930.60 The book, for the most part, referred back to Sarre’s first visit to Konya in

1895 when he had seen the monument in a much more completed state.61

The building was more widely considered in the early twentieth century.

Löytved published inscriptions and photographs in his account of Seljuk epigraphy

in Konya.62 Strzygowski wrote a short article on the monument in 1907, without

actually having seen it, as he admits.63 He worked with photographs taken between

the last attempt to save the structure in 1905 and its collapse on 5 April 1907.64 Four

years later concern for the lack of interest in preserving the kiosk and the citadel

mound of Konya as a historical site in general is expressed in an article that the

architect Kemalettin wrote on the monuments of the site.65 To date, Sarre’s work

based on direct observation before the monument’s collapse, photographs and a

study of tile and stucco fragments from the kiosk in the Berlin collection, is the most

detailed account on the building.

As Sarre noted in the introduction to Der Kiosk von Konia, the building was

already damaged at the time of his first visit in 1895. The roof was missing and long

cracks had appeared on the façade. Over the following decades, the remaining brick

structure further eroded due to climatic influences, so that today only a mound of

bricks, protected by a concrete roof, remains. Thus, Sarre’s publication is a major

testimony of the state of the building at the end of the nineteenth century. Based on

the photographs of the building, Sarre tried to reconstruct the location of fragments

58 Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism’. 59 Friedrich Sarre, Konya Köşkü, trans. Şahabeddin Uzluk, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu

Basımevi, 1967. 60 Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, 10. 61 Sarre, Reise in Kleinasien, 43-46. 62 Löytved, Konia, 56-57. 63 Josef Strzygowski, ‘Der Kiosk von Konia’, Zeitschrift fuer Geschichte der Architektur, 1, 1907-

08, 3-9. 64 Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, 10; Yoltar-Yıldırım, ‘Seljuk Carpets’, 752-753. 65 Mimâr Kemâlettîn, ‘Bir Türk Akropolü’, Türk Yurdu, 1: 11, 1327/ 1911, 333-335, reprinted in

İlhan Tekeli and Selim İlkin, eds, Mimar Kemalettin’in Yazdıkları, Ankara: Şevki Vanlı

Mimarlık Vakfı Yayınları, 1997, 93-97.

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of decoration that were recovered from the ruins. Numerous fragments of stucco

decoration showing vegetal motifs, princely pastimes such as hunting and listening

to music, and various animals; tiles; and the stone sculpture of a lion are preserved

in museum collections in Konya, Istanbul, and Berlin. Sarre illustrated the book with

photographs of many of these fragments, supplemented with drawings

reconstructing the possible arrangement of the tiles inside the building.66

In his discussion of the decoration, Sarre was interested in the architectural

context of the fragments rather than in their decorative or ornamental effect. Even

though he presented examples of ornament as isolated drawings, the monographic

study of the buildings prevented Sarre from producing entirely ornamental plates.

Thus, Sarre’s aim was distinct from that of collections of plates such as those in

Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament or Jules Bourgoin’s Les éléments de l’art arabe.67

While these works represented ornament devoid of its architectural context,

intended for the study and reproduction of these forms by artisans and artists,

Sarre’s purpose is art historical and archaeological. Sarre emphasized the wide

variety, in Seljuk art, of decorative motifs (including figural representations rooted

in the classical heritage of Anatolia): ‘This appreciation for antique art, and

sculpture in particular was combined in the Seljuks in an unique phenomenon in

Islam, that is a sculptural practice which in relief carving did not refrain from the

representation of the human figure’. 68

A similar documentary interest can be traced in Sarre’s catalogue of Seljuk

objects ranging from stone to stucco, woodwork, and carpets chosen from museum

collections in Istanbul, Konya and Berlin. Published in 1909, the catalogue

emphasizes the need Sarre felt to increase the number of available publication on

Seljuk objects, in particular, to add to existing work on the architecture of this

period.69 Interested in the local and historical context of Seljuk Anatolia, he

attempted to understand how an artistic vocabulary employing such a wide range

of motifs and techniques emerged. This involves a formalist discussion of many of

the motifs that appear in the decoration, and a quest for comparative material that

might be of interest in explaining the origin of a certain element of decoration. Thus,

the representations in stucco of animals on a scroll background of which several

examples have been recovered from the kiosk, prompted Sarre to compare them to a

panel from a site in today’s Armenia, showing a similar arrangement:

66 Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, pl. 6, 7 and fig. 16. 67 Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, London: B. Quaritch, 1868; Jules Bourgoin, Les

éléments de l'art arabe - le trait des entrelacs, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1879. 68 ‘Mit dieser Wertschätzung der antiken Kunst und im besonderen der Skulptur vereinigte

sich bei den Seldschuken eine im Islam wiederum einzigartige Erscheinung, eine eigene

bildhauerische Betätigung, die in der Reliefplastik auch vor der Wiedergabe der

menschlichen Figur nicht zurückschreckte’. Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, 7. 69 Sarre, Erzeugnisse islamischer Kunst: Band II - Seldschukische Kleinkunst, v-vi.

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Some examples may point to the purely formal parallels that appear in

Konia and on roughly contemporary Armenian monuments. Thus, the motif

of animal figures on a scroll background that appears on the stucco

decoration of the cornice of the kiosk frequently can be observed on the filler

of the squinches of a three-lobed niche or an arched opening on Armenian

monuments. A fragment, probably made of stucco, in the museum of

Etschmiadsin (fig. 34), that material and provenance of which are not

mentioned in its publication, corresponds formally and stylistically, in the

scroll background and in the drawing of the heraldically placed sirens, to the

composition of the niche frieze in Konya (see plates 12, 13).70

In this passage, the methodology and line of thought hark back to a study

that Strzygowski devoted to Armenian architecture, evoking that region’s

architectural tradition as major influence on medieval, especially Romanesque,

architecture in Europe. Strzygowski evoked the Middle East, particularly Iran but

also Anatolia, as the region through which forms were transmitted.71 Sarre, in his

discussion of the Seljuk kiosk in Konya, did not create the same grand narrative of

transmission and the emergence of cultures that characterizes Strzygowski’s work.72

Nevertheless, Sarre shared an interest in Iranian, or Persian, art as the source of the

artistic and architectural development of Anatolia. Thus, Sarre suggested that the

basis of Seljuk architecture was Persian, yet that in Anatolia other influences

transformed the underlying tradition. Sarre especially pointed out the importance of

Armenian influences, but also acknowledged the impact that the presence of late

70 ‘Ein paar Beispiele mögen auf rein formale Übereinstimmungen hinweisen, die sich in

Konia und zugleich an ungefähr gleichzeitigen armenischen Kunstdenkmälern bemerkbar

machen. So finden wir das am Kiosk in der Stuckdekoration des Nischenfrieses klar zutage

tretende Motiv von auf Rankenhintergrund gestellten Tierfiguren als Füllung der Zwickel

einer Kleeblattnische oder einer Bogenöffnung besonders häufig in der Dekoration

armenischer Baudenkmäler. Ein wohl aus Stuck gefertigtes Fragment im Museum von

Etschmiadzin (Abb. 34), dessen Material und Herkunft bei seiner Veröffentlichung nicht

angegeben sind, stimmt gegenständlich und stilistisch, im Rankenwerk des Hintergrundes

und in der Zeichnung der wappenmäßig gestellten Sirenen, auffallend mit der Bildung des

Nischenfrieses vom Kiosk überein (vgl. Tafel 12, 13)’. Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, 33-34. 71 ‘Man sieht, Teile dieser für die islamische Kunst üblichen Form, in dem sie beginnt, eigene

Stützen herzustellen (d.h. sie nicht wie im weiteren Mittelmeere aus Kirchen zu rauben),

weisen die gleichen Züge auf wie die armenischen Gestalten. Zwischen den beiden

Kunstkreisen aber vermittelt ein dritter: weder die armenischen noch die islamischen sind

selbständige Schöpfungen, beide gehen vielmehr zurück auf den iranischen Kreis, wie sich

in diesem Falle mit Sicherheit nachweisen lässt’. Josef Strzygowksi, Die Baukunst der

Armenier und Europa, Vienna: Kunstverlag Anton Schroll & Co. GmbH, 1918, vol. 2, 439. 72 The historiographical context of Strzygowski’s work on Armenian architecture is

discussed extensively in: Christina Maranci, Medieval Armenian Architecture: Constructions of

Race and Nation, Leuven and Sterling, VA: Peeters, 2001.

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antique and Byzantine architecture must have had on the builders of Islamic

architecture in the region.73

Praising Persian architecture: Die Denkmäler persischer Baukunst

In several of Sarre’s works, the notion of a superior place of Persian culture within

the context of Islamic art is apparent, and clearly rooted in the early twentieth-

century narrative of Islamic art history, discussed above. Even more strongly than

in Der Kiosk von Konya, Sarre evoked the notion in an earlier publication, his multi-

volume work Die Denkmäler persischer Baukunst (Monuments of Persian Architecture).

Seljuk monuments appear within the framework of Persianate Islamic architecture,

dating from the eleventh to the seventeenth century presented in a geographically

arranged survey, spanning parts of Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Anatolia.

In the introduction to the text volume, published in 1910, Sarre justifies the

geographical rather than chronological arrangement with the large number of extant

monuments that made a complete survey impossible. According to Sarre, the

purpose of the publication is to document the monuments before they decay

further, rather than to suggest an evolutionary narrative of Persian architecture.74 In

1921, Sarre republished the section on Konya as an independent book, Konia:

Seldschukische Baudenkmäler. He justified his choice with the statement that although

the Persian elements in the city’s Seljuk monuments were strong, this architecture

formed a closed ensemble strongly influenced by local traditions.75 In the main text,

however, reprinted from the first edition, the Persian aspect of Seljuk architecture

was given precedence and despite the shift in emphasis in the introduction, the

overall narrative remains the same in the second edition of the book.76

In the last section of the text on Konya, the art historian Max Deri (1878-1938)

discussed the question of Seljuk ornament.77 Deri was trained as a historian of

western art, and this was his only publication related to the study of Islamic art.

Deri’s dissertation on ornament in sixteenth and seventeenth century German art,

defended in Halle in 1905, may have triggered his interest in the subject, and have

informed the essay on ornament in Seljuk architecture that he wrote for Sarre’s

book.78 Deri’s main interest lay on attributing the Seljuk decoration of Anatolia to

73 Sarre, Der Kiosk von Konia, 36. 74 Sarre, Denkmäler persischer Baukunst, vol. 3, new introduction, 4-5. The pagination can be

rather confusing since the text volume also contains the original introduction published with

the first consignment of plates in 1901, and the brief descriptions that accompanied each

further consignment. 75 Sarre, Konia: Seldschukische Baudenkmäler, 1. 76 Sarre, Denkmäler persischer Baukunst, vol. 3, 120. 77 Sarre, Denkmäler persischer Baukunst, vol. 3, 139-143. Sarre, Konia: Seldschukische

Baudenkmäler, 27-30. 78 Ulrike Wendland, Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben

und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler, Munich:

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Persian rather than to local culture, and creative contribution by the Seljuks was

outright dismissed.79 Deri regarded the Seljuks as a Turkic nomadic tribe without an

independent architectural tradition prior to the move from Central Asia to Iran in

the eleventh century, in line with the disregard for nomadic traditions that

characterized the narrative of Islamic art history at the time. Hence, Deri suggested

that Seljuk influence might have been responsible for cruder, less refined elements

of decoration:

[...] even if it might be somewhat daring to attribute anything rough in the

ornament of the first half of the thirteenth century to Seljuk influence, it

should be pointed out that this has always been noted in the description of

the monuments. And if, on the other hand, after the thirteenth century

evocations of such rough and clumsy patterns continue to persist, it may be

permitted for now, unclear as the lines of development of Persian

architecture still are, to see in these forms continuous impact of Seljuk blood

and thus a more crude and coarse sentiment on the substance of old and

high Iranian art. 80

This line of thought, attributing the development of art and architecture to

ethnic characteristics reflects the influence of applying ethnic judgments to the

study of Islamic art, that have been noted before. In a short book on Seljuk

architecture in Anatolia, published in 1923, Heinrich Glück (1889-1930), a student

and later assistant of Strzygowski’s, went in a similar direction. This aspect of

Glück’s work on Turkish art, and its position in relation to that of his teacher

Strzygowski ties in with the considerable influence that the formalism of the Vienna

School had on the development of art history and archaeologies in Turkish

universities in the 1920s and 1930.81 In the essay, titled Die Kunst der Seldschuken in

Kleinasien und Armenien (The Art of the Seljuks in Asia Minor and Armenia), Glück’s

Saur, 1999, vol. 1, 121-123; Max Deri, Das Rollwerk in der deutschen Ornamentik des sechzehnten

und siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, PhD dissertation, Friedrichs-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1905. 79 Sarre, Konia: Seldschukische Baudenkmäler, 28. 80 ‘[…] und wenn es auch vielleicht etwas gewagt ist, derart rückschließend alles Gröbere in

dem Ornamentenschatz auch der ersten Hälfte des 13. Jahrhunderts als seldschukischen

Einschlag zu bezeichnen, so sei doch hervorgehoben, daß bei der Beschreibung der

Bauwerke stets darauf hingewiesen worden ist. Und wenn sich dann andererseits nach dem

13. Jahrhundert noch ab und zu Anklänge an derart grobe und ungeschlachte Muster gezeigt

haben, so mag es, so wenig gesichert auch noch die Entwicklungslinien der persischen

Baukunst sein mögen, vorläufig doch erlaubt sein, bei diesen Formen an ein Fortwirken des

Einschlages seldschukischen Blutes und damit gröberen und derberen Fühlens in dem

Bestande alter und hoher iranischer Kunst zu denken’. Sarre, Konia: Seldschukische

Baudenkmäler, 30. 81 Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism’, 74-75. For Glück’s biography, see: Oktay Aslanapa, Türkiye’de

Avusturyalı Sanat Tarihçileri ve Sanatkârları – Österreichische Kunsthistoriker und Künstler in der

Türkei, Istanbul: Eren, 1993, 86-87.

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argument differs from the earlier emphasis on ethnic characteristics in that it

recognizes an original character in the art of Seljuk Anatolia and appreciates the

synthesis of different styles and traditions that it is composed of.82 An important

factor in Glück’s argument is that geographical location and encounter with local

populations can change the development of an artistic tradition without, however,

transforming its innate character.83 Oya Pancaroğlu has noted the impact of Glück’s

work in Turkey, especially through a later article on ‘The status of Turkish Art in the

World’.84 In this piece, Glück focused on ‘Turkish’ elements much rather than on the

diverse influences present in Seljuk architecture.85 While the earlier publication was

still inspired by Sarre’s discussion of the multiple influence exerted, in Anatolia, on

a largely Persianate art and architecture, the later article showed different ideas.

Glück’s work moved towards a new direction in the study of Seljuk art and

architecture, increasingly apparent after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in

1923, to emphasize territory, as well as ethnicity. Thus, now that the Ottoman

Empire had been dissolved, Anatolia as the territorial basis and geographical unit

that formed most of the new nation state, the region itself was more and more

emphasized. This change, together with a somewhat later tendency to focus on the

Turkish and Islamic character of the Seljuks, brought about the end of the inclusion

of Anatolian Seljuk art and architecture into the broader context of Persianate art.

A new narrative: art history in Turkey after 1923

In a historiographical study, Sarre’s work is most coherently placed in the context of

German-Ottoman collaborations before the 1914-18 war, when the German scholar

was active in the field. Thus, Sarre’s story was really an Ottoman one, closely

connected to the relationship between the Ottoman and German empires, neither of

which survived the 1914-18 war. Sarre only travelled to Turkey once after the

foundation of the new nation state (perhaps due to his advanced age), and was not

in close contact with scholars in that country. Hence, Sarre’s work is not easily

linked to the changing narratives of art history and archaeology in the nascent

Turkish nation state, which recent work has poignantly discussed.86 The exception is

perhaps Sarre’s detailed study of the kiosk of Konya that was translated into

82 Heinrich Glück, Die Kunst der Seldschuken in Kleinasien und Armenien, Leipzig: E. A.

Seemann, 1923. 83 ‘Und so zeigt diese Kunst der Türken in Zentralasien, wo sie auf den Buddhismus stießen,

im islamischen Persien, Syrien und Ägypten und schließlich im christlichen Kleinasien und

Armenien und auf dem Boden des alten Byzanz wohl immer wieder ein anderes Bild, doch

immer wieder denselben, aus gleichem Volkstum entsprungenen Geist’. Glück, Die Kunst der

Seldschuken in Kleinasien und Armenien, 3-4. 84 Heinrich Glück, ‘Türk San’atının Dünyadaki Mevkii’, Türkiyat Mecmuası, 3, 1926-33, 119-

128. 85 Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism’, 68-73. 86 Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism’; Redford, ‘ “What have you done for Anatolia Today?”’.

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Turkish in the 1960s, although it does not appear to have a large impact on Turkish

academia, beyond its evident documentary value given the deplorable state of the

monument.87

The transition from the nineteenth-century studies of Seljuk art and

architecture to those that emerged in the context of Turkey is far from

straightforward. The new studies did not necessarily always rely on earlier work,

and their political context was fundamentally different from that of the late

Ottoman Empire. Turkey was at first, from 1923 and into the early 1940s, defined in

terms of its territory: Anatolia became the homeland of the new nation state, since it

took up the largest part of its surface, and the national narrative had to be shaped to

fit these new territorial conditions. The shift in paradigms due to the transition from

a narrative based on the exploration of a multi-cultural Islamic empire, to the

internal self-definition of a Turkish nation-state, becomes evident. To some extent,

this shift in priorities may explain why Sarre’s work was relevant outside, but less

so within Turkey. The cross-regional Persianate context with Byzantine and

Armenian influences, suggested in much of Sarre’s work, did not fit into a narrative

that focused on Anatolia as a contained region, and began to emphasize the role of

the Seljuks as a Turkic dynasty (although this latter line of thinking did not prevail

at first).

Following the 1914-18 war, beyond the context of Turkey, the narrative of

Islamic art history shifted from one based on notions of race and ethnicity,

privileging objects ascribed to Persian culture, to one that included national

narratives. Particularly following the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923,

Anatolian Seljuk art became more and more firmly connected with Anatolia as a

closed geography. Ultimately, Seljuk Anatolia was divorced from the narrative of

Persian art, now also conceived of in national terms as Arthur Upham Pope

continued to work in Iran under Pahlavi rule.

If a trans-regional art historical narrative involving the Anatolian Seljuks

appeared at all in the 1930s, it was one that focused on Turkish art, as in

Strzygowski’s article that made a connection to Central Asia and pan-Turkism.88

Over the course of the 1940s, this narrative became more firmly established with

books such as Türk Sanatı.89 A first edition of the book, written primarily by the

Austrian art historian Ernst Diez who taught at Istanbul University in the 1940s, was

criticized for its emphasis on Byzantine and Armenian influence.90 Only a second

87 Sarre, Konya Köşkü, tr. Uzluk. 88 Josef Strzygowski, ‘Türkler ve Orta Asya San’atı Meselesi’, Türkiyât Mecmuası, 3, 1926–33,

1–80, extensively discussed in Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism’. 89 Ernst Diez and Oktay Aslanapa, Türk Sanatı, second edition, Istanbul: İstanbul Üniversitesi

Edebiyat Fakültesi Yayınları, 1955. 90 Burcu Dogramaci, Kulturtransfer und nationale Identität: deutschsprachige Architekten,

Stadtplaner und Bildhauer in der Türkei nach 1927, Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2008, 334-340. On Diez’s

work in Turkey, see: Patricia Blessing, ‘Recording the Transformation of Urban Landscapes

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edition edited by Diez’s former assistant Oktay Aslanapa, with these passages

removed, became a widely used textbook in Turkish universities. The context here is

very different from that of Sarre’s work, and reflects the transformations that

resulted from the end of the Ottoman Empire, the foundation of nation states, and

the complex political dynamics that emerged in the first decades of the Turkish

republic.

In the historiography of Islamic art, the debate was centered on the

correlation between nationalist ideology, historical scholarship, and the effect of

these two tendencies on the study of the art history and archaeology of Anatolia

within Turkish academia. 91 From the point of view of art history, a rather clear

break appears between the pre- and post-1923 scholarship. Sarre, belonging to the

first group, did not find a central place in the new narrative that came to emphasize

first the Anatolian, and later the Turkish character of Seljuk art in a complex

historiographical trajectory extending into the 1970s, which deserves to be studied

separately.

Patricia Blessing earned her PhD from Princeton University in 2012. Her

forthcoming book, Rebuilding Anatolia after the Mongol Conquest: Islamic Architecture

in the Lands of Rūm, 1240-1330 investigates the relationship between patronage,

politics, and architectural style in Islamic architecture in today’s Turkey after the

Mongol conquest. Her recent publications have appeared in Studies in Travel Writing

(2012) and in Calligraphy and Architecture in the Muslim World (2013). Blessing works

and teaches at Stanford University.

[email protected].

in Turkey: The Diaries of Kurt Erdmann and Ernst Diez’, Studies in Travel Writing, 16: 4, 2012,

415-418. 91 Redford, ‘ “What have you done for Anatolia Today?” ’; Pancaroğlu, ‘Formalism’; see also:

Scott Redford and Nina Ergin (eds.) Perceptions of the Past in the Turkish Republic: Classical and

Byzantine Periods, Leuven and Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2010. The editors address conceptual

similarities with the ‘Lands of Rūm’ conference, with proceedings published in Muqarnas 24,

2007, eds, Sibel Bozdoğan and Gülru Necipoğlu.